A painful lump in the throat

Hi, I have a problem with few lumps on the left side of my throat. They appeared two days ago without any reason at all. I just went to sleep the night before and early in the morning a pain in my neck woke me up. I touched the hurting spots with my hands and they were aching very much. Lumps are about the size of a mid size nut, that means about ¼ inch in size and they are situated only on the left side of the throat and not on the right one. A friend of mine says that I have enlarged lymphatic nodes and that it could be a sign of cancer is that true? Any idea what could it be?

Your friend is right about one thing and that is, enlarged lymphatic nodes could be the sign of cancer disseminating from one place in your body to another. But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that you have it, there’s lots of things to cancer that you don’t have. That’s what they told me when I had enlarged lymphatic nodes 6 months ago and I was scared as hell, just as you are now. I had painful lumps on both sides of my neck, some people scared the hell out of me and told me its cancer, when I went to my doctor she gave me an antibiotic, I think it was erythromycin and told me to drink it, few days later pain in lumps had decreased and they became smaller. When I went for a regular checkup 5 days later she said it was just a bacterial infection that got stuck in lymphatic nodes probably caused by a silent infection of my tonsils. Lumps themselves didn’t disappear totally for another 3 months or so, and I can even feel a few of them now, 6 months after it happened. I think its nothing serious, you should talk to your doctor about this without any fear and let him or she worry about the treatment or the diagnosis, people around you can cause unnecessary anxiety and they are not educated enough to make diagnoses. Good luck, let us know how it all went.

I know this is an old post, but I did want to throw my 2 cents in here for what it's worth. 11 years ago, I was diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I had 2 lumps in my neck.

11 yrs later I'm having a very painful lump in the center of my throat which is being attributed to allergies.

The point I'm trying to make is that, as I have been told by soooo many doctors, cancerous lumps are not painful. Pain is considered a good sign that it is not cancer. I hope you are better (if you should ever return to this post) but, personally, I would always insist that my doctor do a major investigation, especially if they are scratching their heads in semi-doubt.

I was given antibiotics for 6 weeks from a GP before I finally took the bull by the horns and called and ear-nose-throat doctor.

If in doubt, or no relief, my personal motto is call a specialist. Tell them you have a lump and you may be pleased at how quickly they get you in.

Newbiedoobie